Freedom and privacy, R.I.P.

Freedom and privacy, in any meaningful sense, are dead. I know, I know ... I've written about this topic before but that was in the context of our "factual" privacy, which is about access to what you might think of as "static" data about you. Now we have to recognize the death of our "realtime" or "lifestream" privacy: the freedom to go about our business unobserved and anonymously.

Factual privacy is different from lifestream privacy. The former is about access to facts such as the color of your hair and eyes, your ethnicity, your height and weight, your income, your cholesterol level and so on. Those are all data points that create a snapshot of you.